The conversation surrounding AI in South Africa and across the continent has reached a critical inflection point. For the past two years, boardroom discussions have been dominated by the sheer intelligence of Large Language Models (LLMs). But as the initial hype settles, local business leaders are confronting a sobering reality: the most critical challenge in […]

Bloomberg has named South African-founded fintech Omnisient one of its African Startups to Watch in 2026, recognising the company’s work in helping banks and insurers assess people who are excluded from affordable financial services because they lack traditional credit histories. Bloomberg positioned Omnisient around a simple but powerful question: what if your grocery basket could […]

MortgageMarket, a  FinTech and the largest online marketplace for home loans in South Africa, today announced a landmark industry development becoming the first company in 25 years to secure direct bank mortgage origination contracts with major lenders including FNB, Absa, Standard Bank, Nedbank, RMB and Investec. This milestone fundamentally changes how industry players such as, […]

King’s College London researchers hope the chip will help answer previously unanswerable questions about the most important natural processes.

Last month at Beijing’s half marathon, a robot named Lightning beat the human world record by nearly seven minutes. It’s the latest in a string of AI-powered milestones that have got people wondering whether robots are about to enter our everyday lives, just as chatbots have. And the country leading the charge is China, where the government has pledged to invest more than £100bn in...

A longtime Google employee was charged in New York on Wednesday for breaking insider trading laws.

The satellite visuals reveal vast burn scars after blaze tore through rare ecosystems on Santa Rosa Island

Images from a Nasa satellite showcased the devastating scars left behind by a wildfire that consumed roughly a third of Santa Rosa Island, one of the five that make up Channel Islands national park off the southern California coast.

Taken on 20 May, the Moderate Resolution Imaging...

At least seven people have died in recent days as people have tried to cool off in Britain’s waterways

Water safety experts have warned about the dangers of outdoor swimming after a spike in drownings as people try to escape soaring temperatures by cooling off in rivers, lakes, reservoirs and other bodies of water.

In recent days, emergency services have reported at least seven deaths because...

Ofcom said Youngtek Solutions Ltd did not have checks between July and September 2025, but has since brought in verification.

The Universal Real-World Asset (uRWA) standard is now specification-frozen and ready for production adoption across Ethereum and EVM-compatible networks ERC-7943, the Universal Real-World Asset (uRWA) standard, has reached Final status within Ethereum’s formal standards process. The specification is now frozen – with its interface, error definitions, event signatures, and behavioral...

The withdrawal of the Draft National AI Policy Framework shortly after its release, while unfortunate, can be viewed as among the best motivations to engage with the myriad AI risks and the need for such a framework. The Minister of Communications, Solly Malatsi, reported that the draft cited non-existent academic and legal sources, a failure […]

Calaminarian grassland is a rare habitat where plants thrive in soils contaminated by heavy metals. But should these toxic meadows be protected or allowed to fade away?

At first, the small purple flowers are hard to spot in the weak May sunshine. Slowly the drifts of delicate mountain pansies, along with the white rosettes of alpine pennycress, begin to jump out, scattered across an area little...

First impressions carry unusual weight in a social casino. A welcome offer is often the first proof of how a platform treats newcomers: whether it explains itself clearly, invites exploration, or buries the player in fine print. When the opening package feels generous and easy to understand, it lowers the hesitation that often comes with […]

Two scientists have described the bright fireball, crackling noise and sonic boom of the impact 66m years ago

What would it have been like to have lived through the meteorite impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 66m years ago? Writing in the Conversation, Michael Benton, of the University of Bristol, and Monica Grady, of the Open University, describe in vivid detail how it might have felt.

The...

The advertising watchdog said the adverts featuring top footballers had a strong appeal to under-18s.

‘Gender attractiveness gap’ appears across cultures and over centuries but difference fades away with age

Women’s faces are rated as more attractive than men’s, even by other women, but the perceived gap declines with age and all but vanishes by the time people reach their 80s, researchers have said.

The work appears to confirm the existence of a “gender attractiveness gap”, an observation...

Experts say climate change linked to 10% rise in salmonella antibiotic resistance genes between 1940 and 2023

The climate crisis is accelerating a global increase in antibiotic resistance that poses a serious threat to human health, experts have said as figures show a rise in salmonella antibiotic resistant genes.

Antibiotic resistance is one of the fastest-growing threats to global health. It...